Neues zu Open Government

Wie gut funktioniert Open Government? Joshua Green erklärt auf The Atlantic, warum OpenGov zuweilen nicht wirklich wünschenswert ist.

“On Wednesday, I argued that the sudden push to throw open the negotiations of the congressional „supercommittee“ charged with finding $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction was a bad idea that would make a deal less likely. A number of good-government types objected to what I wrote and insisted that openness was an imperative. (…) [L]et me explain further why I differ with them on this one. (….)

The whole point of the supercommittee is that it works outside the ordinary process — to my mind, that’s a feature not a bug. By shielding the negotiators from scrutiny, they’re spared from having to posture for their respective bases, and will have room to offer concessions they wouldn’t dream of making publicly.”

Zum gleichen Thema: Vasilis Kostakis et al. analysieren im Journal Human Technology die Herausforderungen, Gefahren und Chancen der Wikipolitics (und kommen dabei auch auf Mark Kleins Deliberatorium zu sprechen). Ihr Fazit:

“In general, all the examined cases showed that there are possibilities for large numbers of people to effectively collaborate in the formulation and the evaluation of a wide range of ideas regarding the solution of complex problems. (…) However, the ICTs used in wikipolitics projects have to become less artificial and formal and adopt more natural narrative or conversational modes of human interaction. Also, they have to be user-friendly so that users can easily and quickly grasp and handle them. (…) [W]ell-structured ways for content submission and evaluation are needed (…). In addition, during our discussion with the wikipolitics.gr team, it was understood that the traditional hierarchical modes of organization within political parties and societies, in general, arise as an obstacle towards a new, more participatory era for democracy.”

Außerdem: Benjamin Clark und Joseph Logan haben ein Working Paper mit dem Titel “The Government of the People: How Crowdsourcing Can Transform Government” geschrieben. Der Bericht beinhaltet neben einer Übersicht zum Thema Crowdsourcing zwei Fallstudien.

“The main challenges we see are integrating outside wisdom generated by the crowd within rigid expert-based organizations”

resümieren die Autoren.

Schließlich noch ein Hinweis auf eine Neuerscheinung. “Collaborative Governance: Private Roles for Public Goals in Turbulent Times” von John Donahue und Richard Zeckhauser ist vor kurzem erschienen. Die Verlagswebseite informiert über Besprechungen.